protective bond

am I understanding it wrong, or can they just as well remove this skill from the game?

It's 100% useless isn't it?

Level 18 prot bond + BAura + Essence Bond + Armor of Salvation = One easy to use farming build.

Throw in a Blessed Signet and you'll have no Mana problems.

I'd say it is more like 99.9% useless. It was once an awesome skill, but that was prior to being nerfed with the heavy handed energy requirements that forced people to turn to Protective Spirit.

About the only way it is workable is if you are facing an opponent that does spike damage but infrequently attacks or you have a means to negate the energy cost. One possible scenario would be as a bonder running Life Bond on a number of party members, Balthazar's Spirit on himself and casting Protective Bond on a healing monk who is smart enough to stay out of the most of the action but may get occasionally smacked around. Hopefully with the bonds fueling Balth's Spirit, the energy gained plus the use of Blessed Signet would outweigh the loss of energy from occasional hits.

Other than in theoretical situations or mentions of old (2005) builds, I have not seen it used.

Cheers,
TB

You can still make it work if there is elemental damage around (with elemental mantras), but its hard to find suitable spot.

otherwise, yes, its bad skill. One could use it with inferquent, but hard hitting foes, but frankly, simple prot spirit is better choice for those situations.

Prot bond could use some update.

you can use it on an actual monk build! not everything needs to be for farming. effective on a tank bonder.